review (reprinted with kind permission from Highland Park Poetry) by jacob erin-cilberto, author of 27 a book of poems :
A review of Enough About That (a book of poetry by Miriam Sagan)
In an early poem, Sagan writes:
“There are some things
I could say
about human life
but I’ve forgotten.”
These lines emerge from a piece titled “The Day Before my 70th Birthday.” I am a reader just past my 76th birthday and I have forgotten more than I remember---yet those things I say anyway. Miriam Sagan says them much more brilliantly in this book called Enough About That, and after reading this collection of poems, I cry, “Never enough, never enough.”
In her poem “Chimera,” she poses the question, “Was I asleep or awake?” What we see, what we say, what we do, so often we ask ourselves, “Was this real or was it Memorex?” Much like in the old commercial.
She speaks of “people standing on the roof/ … looking for earth.”
She unearths “A woman has husbands and dogs” and “The little girl can turn into a mermaid.”
She writes about us being “locked into a notion of ourselves” as we wish we would be or do we recognize who we actually are?
In “Lines About Red,” she mentions “the love I/ temporarily possess as mine.” Are our lives something we only rent or possess temporarily?
In “Miriam,” her namesake poem, she claims:
“I think I have a new name
which I can’t pronounce
Once my name was Miriam
among bulrushes and lotuses
you can call me
Mama and Grandma and Auntie”
Our lived lives give us more names, more identities based on our experiences, interactions and labels attached to us based on who we are and then what we become to others. Maybe this reviewer will one day write: “Once my name was jacob,” for as she says “Every prophet is a midwife.” And midwives birth new children and maybe new identities as well.
In her poem “Omniscience” she writes:
“Should the full moon rise
it won’t find me,
after all, even I
have no idea where I am.”
And then in “Breastbone,” she expresses how
“This pain beneath
my sternum
a story that can neither stop
nor tell itself
all the way to the end.”
The story that rises up to my surface in reading these poems is one of a journey to find self, but just as we are about to take an exit all the way to a solution, we say, “Enough about that.” And then we look for a different “Who we are” exit, starting all over again, don’t we?
So many fellow poets can relate to this stanza from Miriam’s poem “Gnostic” which reads:
“Sometimes I worry
I’m just writing one poem
over and over.”
Or maybe we are just living the same life over and over and thus WE are the poem repeating. Well, enough about that.
In her poem “Kensho,” Sagan brings us all together:
“The tubercular poet, the exhausted traveler,
and the skinny monk,
we lie on our mats
and muse on the differences.
Then suddenly it is one room.
In “How Shall I Live in the Dark?” she refers to life as
It’s just a few nights’
Rental, a temporary
Dwelling place.
Of course
we should love
our neighbors.
…
As to how
we love ourselves----
that is as mysterious
as the waves that
break but aren’t
broken.
In another poem, Miriam says:
Incredible to have grown old
on this very street
over forty years
of terrible pain and minor parties
incredible to have lived at all.
Yes, incredible, isn’t it? Life is like “renting a temporary dwelling place” for our bodies, hearts and souls. Miriam Sagan has rented a dwelling that is an abode for her amazing poetic talent. Oh, that I would love to rent a room in that mind of hers, even if only for one night. But enough about that.
